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Mayor Bill de Blasio is slightly more popular among New Yorkers than he was three months ago, but the difference of opinion between white and blacks voters has grown, a new survey by Quinnipiac finds.

New Yorkers continue to hold the opinion that Mr. de Blasio should drop his plan to ban the carriage-horse industry in New York. New Yorkers like the horses 2 to 1 (66% in favor compared with 26% who want to shut down the industry.)

The mayor's approval rating, meanwhile, is at 51%, up six points from 45% in March, the poll says. Only 28% disapprove of the job the mayor is doing, down from 34% in March. The remaining 21% of voters were undecided.

Also on the animal front, New Yorkers are divided on the mayor's plan to allow ferrets to be kept as pets, with 39% supporting the furry creatures as domestic companions and 42% opposed.

Mr. de Blasio is still incredibly popular among black and Hispanic voters, but white voters remain split. Black voters approve 66% to 14%, compared with 60% to 22% in March, and Hispanic voters approve 56% to 17%, compared with 47% to 28% three months ago. Among white voters, 41% approve and 42% disapprove of the mayor's performance.

"Black New Yorkers voted overwhelmingly to make Bill de Blasio the mayor. They liked him in our last poll and they like him even more now. White voters are still split, creating a widening approval gap," said Quinnipiac University Poll Assistant Director Maurice Carroll in a statement. "This probably is not the 'Tale of Two Cities' which the mayor envisioned."

Contradictorily, the same portion of respondents approve of the media's coverage of Mr. de Blasio's family and of the mayor's response to that coverage: 58%. Mr. de Blasio reprimanded the tabloids recently for implying that his wife, Chirlane McCray, was a bad mother after she acknowledged her doubts about raising a family in a magazine interview.

Voters approve 57% to 30% of the way Mr. de Blasio is handling crime, 45% to 31% of the way he is handling taxes and 47% to 39% of the way he is handling the public schools.

Almost 80% of voters think the city should enact regulations to help working mothers. The state has been considering legislation that could compel employers to lessen the pay disparity between women and men, but the package of bills has been stymied by a debate over abortion rights.

"There's been a flurry of talk about women's rights and voters agree that, in the workplace and in the political world, women don't get a fair shake," Mr. Carroll said.

For its poll, Quinnipiac University surveyed 1,033 New York City voters from June 5 to 8, giving its survey a margin of error of +/- 3.1 percentage points.

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